A bunch of great new releases and updates to Sun Software has been
announced. The following are the highlights from these releases
[Disclaimer – I am not the author of these writeup’s, just a aggregator of information ;-) ]

The availability of the Java EE 6 and GlassFish Enterprise Server
v3, the first Java EE platform-compatible application server and the
most downloaded Java EE application server in the world.

Java EE 6 is a significant release
of the enterprise Java standard that delivers major productivity
enhancements as well as the Web Profile, a lightweight subset of the
full platform optimized for Web applications.

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3
enables faster time to market with rapid iterative development, the
ability to run dynamic language applications, and enhanced
monitoring and management.

It offers businesses the ability
to easily manage costs and reduce the complexity of their existing
enterprise server deployments.

GlassFish Enterprise Server v3
is based on the Java EE 6 reference implementation and is the
first application server to support the full Java EE 6 platform.

GlassFish Enterprise Server does
not add proprietary extensions and stays true to the Java EE
standard, lowering the barrier to entry.

GlassFish is the most downloaded
Java EE platform-compatible application server, with more than 24M
downloads since 2006. It is focussed on improving developer
productivity and providing an enterprise-grade, open-source
application server solution for customers.

GlassFish Enterprise Server v3
delivers dramatically increased productivity that comes as part of
the Java EE 6 specification and enables rapid iterative
development on multiple languages.

GlassFish Enterprise Server v3
is production-ready.

GlassFish Enterprise Server v3
offers a huge range of benefits to enterprises because of its
open-source approach, which ensures a large talent pool of developer
expertise and a strong partner ecosystem. It also provides
transparency that enables enterprises to align initiatives with
upcoming product releases.

Developers can easily take
advantage of these new features through NetBeans IDE 6.8, the first
IDE to provide complete support for the Java EE 6 platform and
GlassFish Enterprise Server v3.

Developers using Eclipse can use
the GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse 1.2, enhanced to support the
Java EE 6 platform and GlassFish Enterprise Server v3. Download
it!

GlassFish v3 Support: Developers can easily target and
deploy to GlassFish v3, including the new lightweight GlassFish v3
Web Profile.

JavaFX(TM): The latest version of the NetBeans editor
provides improved code completion, hints and navigation for JavaFX.

PHP Support: The NetBeans IDE expands its support of
dynamic languages with support for PHP 5.3 and the Symfony
framework.

Tighter Integration with Project Kenai: Project Kenai, a
collaborative environment for hosting open source projects, now
delivers full support for JIRA and improved instant messenger and
issue tracker integration. For more information visit http://www.kenai.com.

NetBeans Platform: As a rock-solid application framework for
Swing applications, the platform saves developers a huge amount of
time and effort by providing commonly-used facilities such as menu
items, toolbar items, keyboard shortcuts, and window management out
of the box.

Alfresco is a very popular open source Content management system (CMS) and Document management system (DMS). It competes well with commercial offerings. There has been a few instances of requests from technical folks, about the integration points between Alfresco and Sun software, primarily Glassfish application server, Sun Webspace portal server and OpenSSO.

Alfresco and Glassfish
Running Alfresco on Glassfish application server is pretty easy. This is well documented in Amanda’s blog and also the Alfresco web site.

I had a query recently from a partner, who was planning to integrate Microsoft .Net applications with MySQL. I am not an expert on .Net, but I looked around and found the following resources and pointers that will help:

Just got the news, that I have cleared the requirements to become “The Open group – TOGAF (The Open group Architecture Framework) Certified Architect”.

While, I am also a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect SCEA for Java EE 5, there were some significant differences between SCEA and TOGAF, in my view. SCEA is more focussed around technology and is Java and Java EE focussed, is certainly more intensive and multi step (you need to do a online quiz, assignment and an essay). TOGAF is more centred around Enterprise architecture, not just technology architecture and is also technology agnostic. I would say, there is a significant amount of learning and unlearning, to become a TOGAF practiioner. But, I am very happy today to be a part of the large family of TOGAF certified people. We can all talk in the same vocabulary and lingo ;-)

A recent email invite to an “enterprise architecture summit” in Bangalore, kind of triggered a stream of thoughts on EA frameworks, and my experience with a few of them. I have used or am aware of a few EA frameworks, and having been at Sun, we also follow(ed) a framework. Well, I have listed the EA frameworks that I know about and my comments are (these are my personal comments, not Sun’s. obviously, these are “tainted/biased” by the kind of work I do):

Zachman’s framework – This is very popular, keep seeing plenty of training’s and workshops being organized in India. I have looked at this, and it definitely is useful. But, I have a couple of points on this. First, its proprietary and second, it seems very laborious and very painful to document every single of the boxes in the Zachman’s chart. Beyond, documenting “current state” of an EA, I am not too sure, it will help in the complete IT lifecycle. Of course, plenty of people are using it, and obviously see value in it.

TOGAF – The open group architecture framework – I am very impressed by TOGAF, and I love the way we can use TOGAF for its step by step approach, being an open standard, being mature and for its usefulness in the complete IT life-cycle. BTW, Sun is a platinum member of the TOGAF foundation.

Ultimately, in my view, the effectiveness of any EA framework, lies in practicing it and incorporating it in the corporate DNA of any company. There should be a buyin from the top management, they should be convinced about the effectiveness of using EA frameworks. All right then, Happy weekend.

I did my upgrade via the iTunes update center, the update went through like a breeze. The only problem was, my GPRS edge settings disappeared. I googled around, found that iPhone creates a edge setting to be something else than what you need. The solution, is to create a new profile using the iPhone configuration tool , set the apn host name to be www for Vodafone India, export it to a file, email the config file as an email attachment and send it to yourself. Then you need wifi to connect to your email server, extract the attachments and the edge settings worked again. Other than this, the upgrade was a smooth process …

I and my team, were fortunate enough to get sponsored to attend a 5 day MySQL for DBA’s training in Bangalore recently. Even though, I am not a DBA, nor do I intend to become one, but there is upswell of interest for MySQL in India, every customer and partner seems to want to know more about it and there is ever growing linkage between other Sun Middleware products and MySQL.

Sun Identity Manager: MySQL Enterprise server is a supported repository for Sun IDM. This makes great sense, when you are in a really price sensitive situations. I had blogged about this sometime back.

Java CAPS and Glassfish ESB: Of course, MySQL can be used with both Java CAPS (using eWay adapters) and Glassfish ESB, if you are building SOA based applications.

There you have it, there is a fitment with MySQL with almost all of our middle ware products !!

The following are some key things (in my personal opinion) which makes MySQL stand out, from other commercial or open source databases:

Everything and any server configuration settings can be changed/viewed using the my.ini (on Windows) or my.cnf (on Solaris and Linux) files. It is extremely simple. Just add it, under the appropriate headers and it will be picked up by MySQL when in starts. Plus, there are some sample, configuration files, which show sample settings for large or medium kind of databases.

The concept of Storage engines, and switching storage engines, having different storage engines in a single database, blows you away !!! Moving databases, renaming databases is a snap, as simple as renaming files (for Innodb) or changing directory names (for ISAM). Knowledge of different Storage engines can be a little intimidating at first, but for now, there are a few parameters like – what kind of applications will be using it? do you need transactions/ACID compliance? etc etc. Google “compare MYSQL storage engines”

Setting up a MySQL replication with a Master/Slave, is a breeze, and can be done in less than 10 mins for a simple setup. You will find good information in the MySQL documentation.

Every configuration variable setting, can be found using “MySQL>show variables like ‘%keyword%';”
command.

Doing a backup and restore of MySQL data is so simple using mysqldump.

Tuning of MySQL databases seemed to be straightforward, will write up more stuff, as I experiment more. But generally, there are plenty of aids, which explain where time is being spent on queries, and how we can improve them

Creating Triggers, Stored procedures are simple, and like other databases.

It’s my birthday today, got a of calls/emails/twitters/sms’s (the variety of technologies seem to be increasing every year) today. Many thanks to all of you, who wished me. Its been fruitful year, both professionally and personally !! I am looking forward to this year, lots of momentous changes (hint: the Sun-Oracle thing) seem to be in store this year.

I could not resist commenting on one thing. I go to a restaurant, which is part of a chain of restaurants. On my birthday, I get no less than 10-12 emails from the same group, and the same email from them.

The email format is like this:

From: feedback@abcgroup.in
reply-to:babitaxxx@abcgroup.in
to manixxxxx@gmail.com
date Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:17 PM
subject Happy Birthday!
Dear Mani,
We at the ABC Group would like to wish you in advance a very Happy Birthday!
To make this day more special for you, we invite you to celebrate your Birthday at
any of the ABC outlets listed below...
Do call to make your booking with our customer relations executive on 4111xxxx/4111xxxx.
(Office hours - 10am to 5pm), who will arrange your table at any of the ABC outlets.
Thanks,
xxxx
Vice President (Operations)

My email id is the same, the names are a little different. Its sometimes, mani, manikandan, mani chandra etc etc. This is precisely, one of things, where a product like Project Mural , can be a good fit, with its Master data management and ETL capabilities. I hope to send an unsolicited solution document to them shortly ;-)